Clear Eyes, Full Plates, Can't Puke

In recent years, the "sport" of competitive eating has expanded from a Coney Island freak show into an international, well, freak show. Jon Ronson hit the contest trail with some of the circuit's deepest stomachs—men who devour unholy amounts of chicken wings in minutes flat; women who make stupid money mowing down quesadillas—and returned with a tale that answers the only question that really matters: Why?

Here is a mountain of corned-beef sandwiches, each crammed with meat. Eleven men and one woman—some of the world's top competitive eaters—intently scrutinize the sandwiches as they're wheeled by on a trolley toward the stage. We're at an outdoor shopping mall in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, the site of the third annual TooJay's World Class Corned Beef Eating Championship. One contestant drove a thousand miles to be here. He got a flat tire and had to double back to Avis in the middle of the night, but he's made it, and he's ready to battle. I'm intrigued and mystified by the dedication of these athletes, as some of them call themselves. Who are they? What motivates them? I notice them glancing at one another in complicated, intense ways.

But a sense of fatalistic doom pervades the air. This is because one man is quite simply predestined to win. His name is Joey Chestnut, and he's a charismatic, sweet-natured 28-year-old Californian in surprisingly good shape for someone who bulldozes hideous amounts of food into his stomach on a regular basis. In the past six years, Joey has completely dominated the "sport" of competitive eating as it has expanded from a once-a-year carnival stunt to a worldwide tour. He holds world records for hot dogs, asparagus, funnel cake, jalapeño poppers, gyros, grilled cheese sandwiches, chicken wings, cheesesteaks, shrimp wontons, tacos, and at least a dozen other "disciplines."

About 200 people have turned up to watch him try to break his own corned-beef-sandwich record. Fans surround Joey for his autograph. One of them sidles over to me. His name is Sam Barclay. He's such a devotee, he says, that he's actually got himself a job with the International Federation of Competitive Eating (IFOCE), the sport's governing body, as a helper and part-time emcee. And he is in total awe of Joey.

"Everyone, since the dawn of time, has eaten or they've perished," Sam says. "But that man is the best eater who has ever lived, in the history of the world."

The fans are mostly ignoring Joey's challengers. There's the world number two, Pat "Deep Dish" Bertoletti, muscular, wiry, a Mohawk haircut, almost always the bridesmaid, rarely the bride. There's a beautiful woman in her twenties named Maria Edible—a cupcake and a burger tattooed on her arm and the word EDIBLE tattooed inside her mouth. There's a bear of a guy named Bob Shoudt—about the only family man on the circuit. He has three kids and puts any prize money he makes into their college funds. I notice another challenger—a waif of a boy with long dark hair—staring fidly at Joey from across the crowd.

I approach Joey. "Who's that boy?" I whisper.

"Matt Stonie," he whispers back. "He's new. He's good. I watched a YouTube video of him in training. You hear his mother in the background encouraging him. When I saw that, I thought, 'Why would she be encouraging him? There must be something wrong with him for her to be encouraging him to eat.' " Joey lowers his voice. "Apparently when he was 15 he was anorexic."

I take this in. "Wow," I say. "I'm not so sure competitive eating is such a good idea for him."

Joey nods. "You'd think someone with anorexia wouldn't like food," he says. "It's weird. He's a good eater. But I don't think he'll ever be an awesome eater, because surely he doesn't love to eat. I love to eat." He smiles slightly. "I analyze them all. I've got to always find a reason why they'll never beat me. So I'm telling myself that if he doesn't have that love, I'll always be better than Matt Stonie."

Our conversation is interrupted by the emcee, Rich Shea, who is telling the audience how blessed we Americans are to have the freedom to eat as many corned-beef sandwiches as we like under a big blue sky. He introduces the contestants. Each takes his place on the stage. Joey is, of course, last: "...the bratwurst- and pork-rib-eating champion of the world, the calzone champion of the world, the Nathan's Famous hot-dog-eating CHAMPION OF THE WORLD! JOEY CHESTNUT!"

For two days now, I've been listening to Joey extol the sport as a sensei would a martial art. He has told me, for example, how he has studied the ingestion techniques of snakes: "Their muscles are contracting constantly. You'll see when I'm eating, there's a constant weird up-and-down motion. I'm using my whole rib cage to compact the food."

Then there are the years he's spent determining how long to fast before each contest (three days) and which oils best lubricate the digestive system. He's settled on an exact combination of specific brands of olive and fish oils, but he won't divulge more. "I had to figure it out," he said, "so why should I let it be known?"

So after all of Joey's talk of science and preparation, I was imagining the corned-beef contest to be somehow more graceful and balletic. But as Shea counts down to zero and the eating begins, what I see instead are twelve people grotesquely cramming huge piles of meat and fat-sodden rye bread into their mouths. The juice drips down their arms, saturating their shirts. Their puffed-out cheeks are beetroot red. They resemble sweaty, meat-smeared squirrels. The sickly smell of fat permeates the hot air. I notice that the fastest eaters are squeezing the sandwiches in their clenched fists before swallowing them. With one hand they're shoveling in the food, with the other they're gulping liters of water or, in the case of Pat Bertoletti, bright red cherry limeade. Coupled with the semi-masticated sandwiches that are spraying from their mouths in globules as they slobber onto themselves and the table, the whole thing looks like an unimaginable crime scene.

It's a ten-minute contest. By minute six, most of the field is belching and cramping. But not Joey Chestnut. Pat Bertoletti is doing his level best to keep pace with the champ, and young Matt Stonie seems remarkably adept for someone so slight. But Joey is on another level. He's Usain Bolt, but with sandwiches.He had been telling the truth about the "weird up-and-down motion" in his rib cage. He looks like he's performing a disquieting contemporary dance routine. "In competitive eating there's a natural slowdown," Sam Barclay tells me. "But Joey? Nonstop."

We are witnessing a new world record! Joey devours twenty corned-beef sandwiches, shattering his previous record by five and a half. Barclay shakes his head in wonder. "It's not pretty," he concedes. "But it is beautiful."

Joey collects his $5,000 prize money, poses for the cameras, and disappears behind the stage, where I find him looking terrible. "I've got heatstroke," he murmurs.

"It's lucky you're not flying home until tomorrow," I say. He'd told me earlier that he always gives himself a day before flying, because it would be a nightmare if the seat-belt sign were to go on just as the inevitable evacuation began to occur.

He's speaking in fractured sentences, with great difficulty. It seems cruel for me to continue the interview. I congratulate him once again.

"Hopefully I'll feel okay," he says, "in four or five hours."

Competitive eating is, of course, a manifestation of the American urge to turn absolutely everything, even something as elemental as eating, into a competition. And it is as old as America itself—or maybe it started in the early '70s.

The fact is, it's tough to suss out the history of the sport through the thick-as-mustard layer of PR myth that has been slathered onto it by generations of pitchmen. There are tales (possibly true) of pioneers staging contests in the early days of the republic to celebrate bountiful harvests. Nathan's Famous, the Coney Island hot-dog vendor whose annual Fourth of July extravaganza remains the Super Bowl of the sport, claims its event goes back to 1916, when a group of immigrants put on a contest to test their patriotic mettle. This is (almost certainly) untrue. The first Nathan's contest, as best anyone can remember, was actually held on July 4, 1972.

And for the next twenty-five years, that's about all competitive eating amounted to—the Nathan's contest and a smattering of much smaller events across the land. To expand, the sport needed its own Vince McMahon, an entrepreneur showman with a vision. In 1997 it found two: brothers Rich and George Shea. George had done PR for Nathan's and saw opportunity in expanding the tour and soliciting sponsors. The Sheas created the IFOCE, and over the next few years, everything ambled along without much fanfare. Until, that is, July 4, 2001—the most extraordinary day in the history of competitive eating.

Watching the news footage filmed that day, during the minutes before everything changed forever, I was struck by how lackadaisical things seemed. It was a hot Coney Island morning. The competitors, milling behind the Nathan's stage, looked overweight and carefree, nothing like the focused gym rats of today. One mentioned to a TV reporter that he'd just had a nice big breakfast.

"Why?" she asked, surprised.

He shrugged. "Why not?"

She didn't bother interviewing the skinny Japanese kid nobody recognized. But then the contest began. And by the time the Americans had consumed about eight hot dogs each, the quiet newcomer from Nagano had demolished a staggering thirty. Until that day, the Nathan's Famous record was twenty-five and one eighth dogs in twelve minutes. Takeru Kobayashi ate fifty.

He became an international media sensation, the subject of thousands of gleeful headlines. CNN put him on a list of "Japan's greatest sports heroes." And he remained unbeaten—and virtually synonymous with competitive eating—for six years. But then a new and even greater virtuoso emerged.

Joey "Jaws" Chestnut grew up in Vallejo, California. Being the third of four boys, he was always searching for something he could beat his older brothers at. And that thing seemed to be eating very fast. He showed such a talent for it that in 2005, his youngest brother entered him into a lobster competition in Reno.

"I'd never eaten lobster before," Joey told me. "I was 21. I didn't know what the heck I was doing. I was scooping guts. But I tied for third. And the two men who beat me didn't look good. One was Bob Shoudt. He seemed in pain. And I felt fine! I was 'Oh, my God, they look like they're dying. And I can eat so much more!' I knew I was made for it after that contest."

Joey decided that night to dedicate his life to the pursuit. He became obsessed—"nervous, always nervous"—and his discipline paid off in Coney Island on July 4, 2007, when he scarfed down sixty-six hot dogs before an audience of 40,000, besting Kobayashi by a three-dog margin. Joey defended his title the next year and every year since. At the 2009 Nathan's contest, he set a new world record with sixty-eight hot dogs. Last year, between his prize money and sponsorships, he raked in $205,000.

Kobayashi, meanwhile, hasn't competed in an IFOCE-sanctioned contest since 2009, the year he finished second to Joey at Nathan's for the third time in a row. ("Kobayashi won't talk to me," Joey says. "He hates me.") I assume this is due to his shame over becoming second best, but when I reach him on the phone, he denies this. Through an interpreter, he tells me that the Sheas "love to say, 'Kobi isn't man enough to eat up against our dude Chestnut.' But it has never been that. They wanted me to sign a contract that gave away all my human rights!" The IFOCE contract, he says, forbade him from competing in any non-Shea contests, which he took as a declaration of war. Nowadays, Kobayashi is still a draw, but he exists in a parallel universe of events that seem more about appearance fees and PR than official competition.

When a sport starts spawning feuds and sideshows, that's when you know it's turning into something truly large.

At the corned-beef contest, no one was surprised that Pat Bertoletti came in second, with eighteen and a half sandwiches. He and Joey were neck and neck until the final moments, when Pat, a 26-year-old caterer from Chicago,floundered and Joey seemed to accelerate. It was who came in third (with fourteen and a half sandwiches) that shocked everyone—and announced the arrival of a rising star. The bronze went to the waifish mystery kid, Matt Stonie.

I found him after the contest, sitting in the shade. Unlike Joey, he looked fine. We got to talking about his life. He's 19. Back in middle school, he said, "I was an A student, but then I went down to B's and C's. My parents freaked out and sent me to boarding school. I hated it. It was really strict. I kept myself isolated. I got kind of confused about who I am." He paused. "I've always loved food. But I began to have a hard time telling myself what was correct. I remember thinking, If I lose five pounds now, I can go home this weekend and have a good time with my friends, eating burgers...."

That's how the anorexia started. It wasn't long before he weighed eighty-five pounds. His life became all about doctors and psychiatrists. Finally he decided to reclaim some control. "So I utilized competitive eating to try to take care of myself in general."

"Have any doctors suggested that competitive eating may not be the best way to get over an eating disorder?" I asked.

"My doctor loves it," Matt said. "I'm super healthy. I've got normal cholesterol levels. I'm weighing anywhere between 120 and 130 pounds. It's a disorder that sticks with you, so it's a process I'm still working on. But I'm hitting the gym a lot more. I'm trying to build up. Even though it's nice to be skinny, having a little more mass on you makes it a lot easier to deal with the contests."

"Joey told me he thinks he'll always have the psychological advantage over you, because your anorexia will make you hesitate. And in that hesitation he'll triumph," I said.

"Joey talked about me?" Matt said. He looked thrilled. "I guess I'll tell him what I've had to say to a lot of people." He addressed my voice recorder: "Joey, I'll prove you wrong."

A cloak-and-dagger meeting at a Dunkin' Donuts in Clifton, New Jersey. Maria Edible arrives at 9 p.m., looking furtive. She's the beautiful woman with the food tattoos.

Back in Florida, she told me about her strange "double life." Her parents, with whom she lives, were unaware of her competitive eating. "It's quite challenging," she said. "I train in my room. So I'm literally sneaking past my dad's office with my tray of corned-beef sandwiches."

"What about the smell?" I asked her.

"The room airs out by the time they wake up in the morning," she said.

I offer her a doughnut, but she declines. She's fasting for the upcoming Isle Waterloo World Cupcake Eating Championship, which is two days away in Iowa. She shows me photos of her "training area"—her tiny bedroom. Thirty-six cupcakes are piled up on the dresser. She's 27, a shy person, she says. By day she works in a "corporate environment" in New York City. She won't say where.

A couple of nights ago her parents found her TooJay's competition T-shirt, which led to some feverish Googling. And they discovered that she actually leads a triple life. She's not just a competitive eater but also a lingerie/pinup model who sometimes incorporates food into her shoots. Soon they found topless photographs of their daughter on her hands and knees, alluringly clutching a hot dog. Another topless shot had her on her back, covered in chili and tortilla chips. "My mom was, 'This is a disorder.' My dad was, 'This is so bad, you're going to die early. I want you to see a doctor.' "

As it happens, binge eating is not currently considered a mental disorder. But that's probably about to change. In May 2013, the American Psychiatric Association will publish the fifth edition of its manual, the DSM, and binge eating is expected to be included.

"Do you think it's a disorder?" I ask Maria.

"I wouldn't call it that," she says. "But I'd always turn to food when I was stressed. And I'd feel bad sitting at home stuffing my face."

She says her parents are more worried about her than ever, but she's actually never felt happier. "There's the whole being-on-stage thing—I can feel like a star. And now if I stuff my face, people give me money and attention. So that feels better. Plus, there's the travel, the people I meet. We're like a family."

She says she's tried explaining to her parents that "for the first time in my life I've found something I'm committed to, but they don't want to know."

I wanted to know about Bob Shoudt, the man who beat Joey at the lobster contest in Reno, so I e-mailed IFOCE co-founder Rich Shea. Rich replied with something strange: "Bob is the one guy I have never been able to figure out, ever." He didn't elaborate.

Bob, who's currently ranked fifth in the world, lives in the Philadelphia area and does IT work for Hewlett-Packard clients. I meet him at the offices of one of them, and we go to Applebee's for lunch. But he doesn't eat. Like Maria, he's fasting in preparation for the cupcakes. He's not a lunch person anyway, he says. In fact, he first noticed he was an exceptional eater when he began skipping breakfasts and lunches. He figured that if he missed breakfast, he could sleep for twenty minutes longer, and if he worked through lunch, he could get home sooner. "So at dinner I eat a lot of food," he says.

I scrutinize Bob as I eat. He seems to have something about him that Joey and Maria and Matt lack. Then I work out what it is. He seems content.

"I've got the house, the car, the picket fence," Bob says. "I'm living my dream life. So the competitive eating on weekends is great, but it's not my life."

Joey said as much about Bob. "He's the weekend-warrior type," he told me. I could tell Joey found this approach to be a weakness. To be a titan, you need twenty-four-seven commitment.

"Joey thinks your happiness is the reason you rarely win," I tell Bob.

"Oh, he knows it," Bob says. "I was talking to him Tuesday night. He said, 'Why aren't you training for the cupcakes?' I said, 'Joey, I got to pick up my daughter, drive her to dance class, drive my other daughter to basketball...' " A faraway look crosses Bob's face. "But when I'm at the table...I can't let on in an interview how seriously I take it, because I'd probably be committed to a mental hospital."

"What do you mean?" I ask.

"Time slows down," he says. "You don't hear the announcer. You just have this...flow."

"When were you last in that altered state?" I ask.

"Probably when I did ninety-five hamburgers [sliders] in eight minutes," Bob says. "I was just totally locked down." He pauses. "I know it's viewed as horror, shock, a sideshow. But when people see us up there, it blows them away. Which is why the groupies are insane."

We're in Waterloo, Iowa, at the Isle Casino Hotel, a bleak resort plopped into a mass of gray nothingness—miles of farmland. First prize for the cupcakes contest is just $1,500. The stage has been ignominiously set up in the shadows under the lobby escalators, far from the slot machines, which is the only bustling part of the building. And by bustling, I mean a handful of elderly people robotically pressing the spin buttons as if toiling on a production line. I can't imagine how even a competitive-eating contest will lure them from the slots.

The world's number two and three—Pat Bertoletti and Tim "Eater X" Janus—are somewhere in the building, but Joey is not. He has skipped this event, believing it to be shoddily organized. Matt Stonie is absent, too. Casino contests are 21 and over, so Matt has to wait two years before he's allowed to compete.

I stand with Bob Shoudt in the lobby. He seems happy, energetic, I suppose because, with Joey not here, he has a chance to win.

Bob tells me he'd love the opportunity to have an illicit look at a cupcake.

"Would you eat it?" I ask him.

"I'd probably just put it in my mouth and spit it out," he says. "Will it be dense? Dry?"

"Wouldn't that give you an unfair advantage?" I ask.

Bob looks at me. And then something happens. Perhaps this forlorn casino has made him feel forlorn about the sport he loves so much. But it all pours out. Competitive eating, he says, is rife with unfair advantages.

"I've seen everything," he says. "People throwing hot dogs under the table. People making the biggest messes you can imagine."

My eyes widen. "So there's such a mess under the table it's impossible to determine what counts as an eaten thing?" I ask.

"Oh, there's techniques," says Bob. "People suddenly get happy feet." He mimes an eater dropping an item of food and then covertly stamping it into the ground. I'm appalled. Cheating makes everything pointless. And then Bob confesses that—if need be—he will be one of those cheaters. When his wife is in the crowd, they use pre-arranged signals. "If the eaters are dropping stuff like crazy, she'll give a meaningless cheer. I'll understand. Suddenly the food gets very slippery for me."

He gives me a look that says: Don't judge me until you've walked in my shoes. Leave the Gandhi-like behavior to the fools who don't mind losing to the cheaters.

A man is wheeling some silver cabinets toward the eating table. We hurry over. "Is it possible to look at a cupcake?" Bob asks the man.

"Sure," he says. Bob takes one and instantly scurries to the toilets. He's gone so fast I don't have time to follow.

The contestants drift in. Maria keeps to herself in the shadows. I've calculated that each cupcake contains around 500 calories, which means the contestants will be eating something like 25,000 calories in eight minutes. It would take a normal person eating a normal amount of calories ten days to consume that many. I find this horrifying, but no one else seems to care.Also horrifying:There are buckets under the stage. Today's emcee, Dave Keating, explains they're for "reversals. We don't use the V-word on the circuit." A reversal, by the way, results in immediate disqualification.

"We're OUT OF CUPCAKES!" yells Dave the emcee. "It's first to finish! First to finish, ladies and gentlemen!" Nobody seems to know what this means, but Dave keeps yelling it.

A few dozen gamblers amble into the lobby, joining the small crowd of fans and family members who've made the journey. And then there's the countdown, and the contest begins.

I don't know if it's the absence of Joey that's spurring the eaters so frenziedly on, or whether the sugar rush is giving them a kind of frantic energy, but within a few minutes their eyes are bulging, their bodies are shaking, and there's no slowdown. Each cupcake only seems to fire them up for more. And suddenly it is pandemonium. Something happens that (I'm later told) has happened only once before in the history of competitive eating.

"We're OUT OF CUPCAKES!" yells Dave the emcee. "It's first to finish! First to finish, ladies and gentlemen!" Nobody seems to know what this means, but Dave keeps yelling it: "First to finish! I've never seen anything like this! This is an absolutely new record, ladies and gentlemen!"

He's putting on a brave face, trying to make the debacle seem exciting, but it isn't. It's confusing. Some competitors, like Bob and Pat, have no cupcakes left, so they're just standing there. Others, like Maria, are still eating. Bob starts yelling at Dave. I leap onto the stage, my voice recorder in my hand, to chronicle the chaos. Some casino staff members run across the lobby to intercept me. "Sir!" they're yelling. "Sir! Sir! Competitors only on the stage!"

"But I'm from GQ!" I yell back. "I'm ACCESS ALL AREAS!"

"Get to the side!" the security guard is hollering at me. "TO THE SIDE."

Maria is standing there, a cupcake in her hand, staring limply into space. This commotion doesn't really involve her, nobody's looking at her, and she looks lost.

Bob is still shouting. Dave continues in vain to make it sound historic. "Six hundred and sixty cupcakes eaten in six minutes! It's a brand-new record!"

Things finally calm down after ten minutes or so, and I wander over to Dave. "What a calamity," I say.

"It really sucked," he says. "And of course we have a fucking reporter here."

"What went wrong?" I ask.

"The cupcakes were lighter than last year," he says. "We had a wider field. It was a perfect storm."

The top five competitors agree to split the prize money, with a little extra going to the clear front-runner, Pat Bertoletti.

I try to interview Pat, but to no avail. He's so hyped-up on sugar he's pacing around the lobby like a man on fire. They all are. I manage to catch Bob for a moment. "I'm not happy," he says. "I woke up at 3:45 a.m. I'm going to get home at midnight. And I had to talk my way into prize money to cover my expenses." And then he's gone, too. I'm beginning to reassess my idea that Bob seems content.

I've never seen so many people experience such a profound sugar rush all at the same time. They're like windup dolls, lost in the middle of nowhere, discombobulated without enforceable rules to keep them steady, pacing around and around, starving for order.

And now the big one. Coney Island. The Fourth of July. The Nathan's Famous International Hot Dog Eating Championship, with a $10,000 first prize. "The only one," Pat Bertoletti tells me, "the public really cares about."

Thousands have gathered on the boardwalk by the beach. Many are chanting "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" Onto the giant stage marches a procession of stilt walkers, dwarves dressed as Uncle Sam, cheerleaders, bodybuilders, a girl singing "The Star-Spangled Banner." Presiding over the pageantry is the legendary emcee George Shea, wearing a straw boater. ESPN is filming it all for a 3 p.m. broadcast.

The eaters are crowded into a little room backstage where thousands of hot dogs are being mass-cooked. They're like gladiators sharing a dressing room with the lions. Matt Stonie is separate from the others. He's outside, pacing nervously. I wave at him but know to leave him alone. Last night I bumped into him at the Manhattan hotel where many of the eaters were staying. "I'm dreading the thought of eating all those hot dogs," he told me, seeming agitated. "It's so miserable. It's going to be hot, and the taste of it will be awful. It's like a bor knowing that every punch is going to hurt." But when I ask if he thinks he has a chance to win, he says, "If Joey Chestnut pukes, if Pat Bertoletti's not on his game, if I have a good day..."

Joey and Pat sit next to each other backstage but say nothing. Joey once told me they rarely talk before an event. Sometimes they'll heartily slap each other on the back in the moments before a contest begins, feigning friendliness, when what they're actually trying to do is irritate each other. So it was all the more remarkable when, last night at the hotel, I saw the two men huddled in a corner, speaking quietly. It was a melancholy and surprising conversation. Pat was asking Joey, "When you retire, will you give me the secret?"

"You've seen everything I do," Joey replied.

I turned to Pat. "Do you sometimes feel like Buzz Aldrin to Joey's Neil Armstrong?"

"For sure," he said. Despite the tough-guy mustache and scary Mohawk, there was a real sweetness to Pat. He seemed resigned to the fact that he has hit the ceiling, that he'll always be second best. And he's had enough, he said. He's getting out of this crazy sport.

He backpedaled slightly. "It's not that I want out," he said, "but I don't want to linger."

What he meant is that once you're number one, there's nowhere to go. Joey is trapped at number one like Pat is trapped at number two.

"My goal is seven [Nathan's titles] in a row," Joey said. "Next year could very well be my last."

"Do you also want to quit because you realize it's a bizarre way to live your life?" I asked him.

"Probably," Joey said.

The truth is, rarely have I done a story about something that's so utterly, existentially pointless and so emblematic of the American tendency to go way too far. And Joey and Pat know it.

"I'm more than just a competitive eater," Joey told us. "I'm a smart guy. I could be an awesome park ranger."

"That would be a great job," I agreed.

"A park ranger in Alaska!" said Joey. "You get a gun! 'Hey! Make sure you put out that campfire! Hey! Clean up your garbage!' "

Joey looked at me then, and he smiled.

It's time for the women's contest. Which brings the first great surprise of the day. Maria Edible. She's a disaster. Onstage she looks ghostly white, in agony. She manages only eighteen and a half hot dogs (two fewer than her personal best). The winner for the second year in a row is Sonya Thomas, a.k.a. the Black Widow, the fourth-ranked eater in the world, who sets a new women's record with forty-five. I find Maria after it's over. She's slumped against a wall backstage. "I don't know what happened...," she's murmuring.

I want to ask her more, but the floor manager hurries in. It's time for the men to line up.

Halfway through the contest, something impossible seems to be happening. "Matt Stonie!" George Shea is yelling into the microphone. "Many are calling him the new Joey Chestnut! This is amazing, ladies and gentlemen! Matt Stonie is doing so well he's only four hot dogs behind Joey Chestnut. Nineteen years of age! And yet he's the only one truly putting pressure on Joey Chestnut!"

Matt is out in front of Bob Shoudt and Pat Bertoletti and Tim "Eater X" Janus. He's a man possessed, like Kobayashi on that famous day in 2001. He's gaining on Joey, all those years of pain propelling him on. Twenty-eight hot dogs, twenty-nine hot dogs, thirty hot dogs, thirty-one...

But then, suddenly, heartbreakingly, at thirty-four dogs into the contest, Matt hits a wall. ("Died out," he'll later say on Facebook.) The manic pace with which he'd been inhaling hot dogs slows dramatically, and a look of defeat crosses his flushed, sweaty face.

"Their dreams and hopes begin to fade as they approach the end!" George Shea hollers as Joey's lead widens. "If fate and destiny existed, they would surely concern themselves with the affairs of this man. But they do not exist! The future is the property of the iron-willed, and there is only one man who has an iron will and it is he, Joey Chestnut!"

The final score: Joey, sixty-eight (matching his world record); Tim Janus, fifty-two and a quarter; Pat Bertoletti, fifty-one. Matt ends up fourth, with a total of forty-six, a personal best. It's Joey's sixth Nathan's title in a row, tying Kobayashi's streak from 2001 to 2006. The audience—many of whom are wearing Joey Chestnut T-shirts and holding Joey Chestnut signs—is screaming his name as he stands before them, exhausted and utterly spent, basking in their love.

A few minutes later, as Joey wades triumphantly into the throng, holding his championship belt aloft, I remember something he told me a few months earlier: "I have to learn to ignore my feelings. Not just the feeling of hunger and the feeling of full, but the feeling of embarrassment, too. I have to remember that this is only weird if I make it weird."

Soon Joey is swallowed by the crowd, and I lose sight of him. All I can see now is the belt itself, its painted gold glinting in the relentless sun, bobbing along in a surging tide of red, white, and blue.

Jon Ronson's new anthology, Lost at Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries, is out now.all

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